as free states, as Vermont had been.  Kentucky was originally part of Virginia, and when it was admitted, came in as a slave state.  Tennessee once belonged to North Carolina, and hence was also slave soil; and when it was given to the United States, the condition was imposed by North Carolina that it should remain so.  Tennessee, therefore, entered the Union (in 1796) as a slave state.  Much of what is now Alabama and Mississippi was once owned by Georgia, and when she ceded it in 1802, she did so with the express condition that it should remain slave soil; as a result of this, Alabama and Mississippi were slave states.  Louisiana was part of the Louisiana Purchase, and was admitted (1812) as a slave state because it contained a great many slaves at the time of the purchase.

Thus in 1820 there were twenty-two states in the Union, of which eleven were slave, and eleven free.  Notice now two things:  1.  That the dividing line between the slave and the free states was the south and west boundary of Pennsylvania from the Delaware to the Ohio, and the Ohio River; 2.  That all the states in the Union except part of Louisiana lay east of the Mississippi River.  As to what should be the character of our country west of that river, nothing had as yet been said, because as yet no state lying wholly in that region had asked admittance to the Union.

%309.  Shall there be Slave States West of the Mississippi River?%—­But when the people rushed westward after the war, great numbers crossed the Mississippi and settled on the Missouri River, and as they were now very numerous they petitioned Congress in 1818 for leave to make the state of Missouri and to be admitted into the Union.

The petitioners did not say whether they would make a slave or a free state; but as the Missourians owned slaves, everybody knew that Missouri would be a slave state.  To this the free states were opposed.  If the tobacco-growing, cotton-raising, and sugar-making states wanted slaves, that was their affair; but slavery must not be extended into states beyond the Mississippi, because it was wrong.  No man, it was said, had any right to buy and sell a human being, even if he was black.  The Southern people were equally determined that slavery should cross the Mississippi.  We cannot, said they, abolish slavery; because if our slaves were set free, they would not work, and as they are very ignorant, they would take our property and perhaps our lives.  Neither can we stop the increase of negro slave population.  We must, then, have some place to send our surplus slaves, or the present slave states will become a black America.